1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method of filtering dust from the gaseous emissions, particularly chimney gases/smoke, that are released by industrial glass furnaces. More particularly, filtering dust from the gaseous emissions of draft glass furnaces which primarily use gas or fuel oil burners as their energy source.
2. Description of the Related Art
In the area of glass manufacturing, most furnaces are equipped with regenerators, i.e., regenerating air heaters that force the furnace to operate by inversion cycles. For example, end-fired furnaces which are widely used in the packaging glass industry and cross-firing burner furnaces which are also used in the packaging glass industry as well as in the window glass industry, as well as the furnaces used in the glass wool or rock wool or reinforcing textile fiber glass industries, are typically required with regenerators.
The operation of these glass furnaces results in the formation of abundant gaseous emissions. The emissions result not only from the combustion that generates the energy necessary for melting the vitrifiable raw materials, but also, more particularly, from flying vitrifiable materials in the melting chamber, in the furnace loading area and the entire area of molten glass materials covered by the glass composition, or from the exchanges that exist at the interface between the molten glass materials and the atmosphere that surmounts them. Such exchanges cause a certain number of chemical species of the molten glass materials to volatilize in the furnace atmosphere. These interactions are why the gaseous emissions discharged from the top of the smokestack can contain dust of various kinds and origins.
The growing preoccupations linked to the protection of the environment lead us to seek to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, any discharge considered to be polluting, such as NO.sub.x, CO.sub.x or SO.sub.x, as well as the various kinds of dusts generated in furnaces. This desire has been expressed by a commitment on behalf of the French packaging glass industry ("The Voluntary Global Commitment for the Environment by the French Packaging Glass Industry") endorsed by the Federation of Mechanical Glassworks of France in February 1997, which completed a departmental order signed on Oct. 21, 1996, amending the departmental order pertaining to the glass industry of May 14, 1993.